Park Pride has announced that applications are being accepted from community and park groups in the City of Atlanta to be a part of the 2016 Park Visioning Program, a program built upon facilitating conversation about the goals and hopes residents have for the future of their park and creating a conceptual master plan based on those conversations.
The Park Visioning Program guides community groups through an eight to 10 month comprehensive exercise in group discussion, collaboration and consensus building to reenvision their neighborhood parks. The success of the program hinges on robust and inclusive public engagement and results in a clear and descriptive conceptual master plan, which acts as a road map for the park’s development and as a tool for fundraising. Park Pride’s Visioning team draws on expertise in landscape architecture, engineering principles and community engagement experience to facilitate an open dialogue between individuals and stakeholder groups. The team not only guides and documents the visioning process, but also provides the graphics, photos, illustrations and site plans necessary to help communities envision possible outcomes.
Walt Ray, the Director of the Park Visioning Program, explained why Park Pride puts such a heavy emphasis on public engagement. “We recognize that individuals who live in a community are experts of that community. They are intimately familiar, more than an outside organization ever could be, with the internal operations and culture of the neighborhood; they know what their community needs of a park to make sure it will serve its purpose as a community gathering space. Park Pride’s bottom-up approach ensures that as greenspaces are being developed and redeveloped, they’re meeting the needs of the communities that use them.”
Since 2005, Park Pride has helped over 30 communities develop Park Visioning Plans for their neighborhood parks. By providing documentation of consensus regarding the need, the components of the plan, the budget and priority phasing, these completed plans are excellent tools for leveraging funds for project implementation. To date, these community-driven conceptual plans have leveraged over $14 million toward implementation of park improvements.
In 2016, Park Pride will work with two communities in the City of Atlanta as part of the Park Visioning Program. The deadline to apply is Tuesday, September 8, 2015 at 5 p.m. To find more information on Park Pride’s Visioning Program, to review park master plans created through this process, and for information about how to apply, visit parkpride.org.